The government’s prison and probation service agency shot to the top 20 biggest apprenticeship providers last year after making it mandatory for all new prison officers to begin their career as an apprentice.
Analysis of provider-level apprenticeship starts data shows His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) had just 20 starts in its first year of delivery in 2018/19 but grew to 2,387 in 2021/22.
This made the HMPPS the 19th largest training provider of apprenticeships in England for the whole of last year, according to numbers crunched by Apprenticeship Data Insight – operated by FE Week publisher Lsect Ltd.
HMPPS, which is an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice, appears to have ramped up its numbers after gaining quality approval from Ofsted. The inspectorate judged HMPPS to be making ‘reasonable progress’ across the board in an early monitoring visit report in July 2021 when it had less than 200 apprentices.
